Cancer is a major cause of death in the world. Despite of numerous efforts trying to figure out new approach for cancer treatment, the range of choice in initial treatment is confined to alone or a combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. However, the surgery and radiation therapy are useful only in clearly identified types of cancer, its use for treating a patient having already spread disease is limited.
Chemotherapy is a useful method for treating a patient who suffers from metastatic cancer or diffuse cancer such as leukemia. Even though chemotherapy can provide a therapeutic effect, the chemotherapy may often end in failure because the patient's cancer cells may have a resistance to the chemotherapeutic agent. Therefore, the chemotherapeutic agent is typically provided in combination with other agent, because surroundings of the cancer cells may have a resistance to the chemotherapeutic agent.
Therefore, another chemical treatment method and chemotherapeutic agent are required, and in order to find the chemotherapeutic agent for the treatment of cancer, researchers, academia and companies are making constant efforts. In particular, heterocycle compounds are widely used for the treatment of cancer, many researches are concentrated on compounds with tetrazole ring, and many biologically active materials have been reported (Rhodes D R, Ateeq B, Cao Q, Tomlins S A, Mehra R, Laxman B, Kalyana-Sundaram S, Lonigro R J, Helgeson B E, Bhojani M S, Rehemtulla A, Kleer C G, Hayes D F, Lucas P C, Varambally S, Chinnaiyan A M. AGTR1 overexpression defines a subset of breast cancer and confers sensitivity to losartan, an AGTR1 antagonist. PNAS 2009/10.1073/pnas. 0900351106). Particularly, 5-substituted 1,2,3,4-tetrazole was reported to have antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral and anti-inflammatory effects.
In the course of developing new compounds with tetrazole ring having an anti-cancer activity, the present inventors have synthesized novel tetrazolo hydrazone derivative compounds, confirmed that the compounds have an excellent anti-cancer effect, and then completed the present invention.